Mercedes race engineer Peter Bonnington has lauded his driver Kimi Antonelli’s stunning Monaco Grand Prix pole position.
Following a thrilling qualifying session around the unforgiving streets of Monte Carlo, Antonelli secured pole position, further justifying Mercedes’ bold decision to promote him at such a young age.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Bonnington, affectionately known as “Bono”, offered insight into the rapid development of the current championship leader.
“I’m sure he’ll come back and say there was another tenth or two in there – he always does! – but [the lap] was pretty good,” Bonnington said. “I didn’t think it was on. Just looking at the time delta, I thought, ‘It’s going to be close, but it’s not going to happen.’
“But then the last couple of corners, yeah, came good.”
Bonnington noted the importance of giving the 19-year-old the freedom to enjoy racing the car and not get too stressed about the championship fight.
“Well, it’s just always chipping away, and we try not to focus on the goal; you always focus on the process,” he added. “And just make sure he keeps his head down, working on the right things.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images
“Giving him the freedom to do what he enjoys, giving him the freedom to enjoy driving the car. And that’s a really big thing. And not stressing too much. Let’s just enjoy the journey, and we’ll just get on with it, but let’s not get carried away with ourselves. Let’s just focus on climbing each mountain at a time.”
When asked if the Italian driver keeps surprising him, the race engineer continued: “He’s pretty good. He’s just a joy to work with, but he does continually keep surprising us. I mean, FP1, we hit the ground running and thought, ‘Wow, we’re actually in decent shape here.’
“We haven’t been great here in the past for quite a number of years, so we haven’t actually got a decent reference. So it was a little bit surprising how good we were in FP1, but it kind of fell apart in FP2.
“But the great thing—he leads me to it. He just came in this morning, we went through a few bits and pieces, jumped in the car, and completely transformed, and that’s it. As soon as he’s happy in the car—happy driver, fast lap time.”
Antonelli has been part of the Mercedes Junior Team since 2019 and later joined the Mercedes F1 team in 2025 when Lewis Hamilton, whom Bonnington famously worked with, left for Ferrari. The Brackley outfit fast-tracked Antonelli through the junior ranks, progressing from Formula 4 to Formula Regional to Formula 2.
Bonnington noticed that Antonelli had something special when he carried out testing with the team.
“To be fair, it was before he actually started competing in the championship,” Bonnington said when asked how quickly he realised Antonelli was going to be as quick as he is now.
“When we had him in the TPC cars, it was quite evident that he had the talent straight away, you know. You have young drivers come along and it takes them a while to get up to speed.
“I think it probably took Kimi about four laps to start matching the high speed, and if you can match the high speed, you know that the kid’s got some raw talent. So we knew very early on he was a diamond in the rough, just took a little bit of polishing. And it’s the second year that always does it.”
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